you may be interested in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIyx23OY8Nk&feature=related if you like climbing

Lol.

Yup.

The measley few npc's we have in Oblivion you meet on the streets that aren't quest related are just the same. Well, almost the same. The ones in Oblivion have worse animations and better voice acting, but they serve the same purpose. Disposable. Entirely throwaway. Even if they are quest related, you get their little snippet of story, and they have nothing else. Disposable. Entirely throwaway.

Morrowind and Oblivion are the same, Daggerfall had thousands of npc's that all had dialogue the way I would like them to.

I propose we do it like Daggerfall.


1.5 years.
True. You could also fetch.

Assassin's Creed isn't open world like Bethesda's games, which is another big factor. They can make such huge, detailed cities because they don't have to worry about creating all of the land between them. Bethesda not only has to make the cities, but the land between them and the little locations scattered across that land. If Bethesda diverted it's resources to making cities on par with Assassin's Creed, it would severely reduce the quality of the other areas of the game.

True, but I don't quite agree that the "wandering the wilderness" experience in the TES games has ever been that great. Arena didn't have a wilderness either. I don't think Bethesda could make cities on par with AC, so I'd hope they'd shoot for eight or ten percent as good.

I'm sorry? Bethesda's games are famous for their element of exploration, they make some of the only seamless, open-world RPGs out there. But I do agree that even slightly bigger cities would be great.

If they do overland exploration well, I'll be happy with it. Until then it isn't a selling point for me. I'd rather a geographically correct world with fast travel between points, instead anyway. The best solution is the one Nottheking came up with.

I dont really like oblivion that much, but I've been quite happy with what modders have made in the empty spaces. I'm talking about you, http://www.oblivionmodwiki.com/index.php/Unique_Landscapes.
That kind of thing really has the potential to greatly enhance the overworld exploration aspect of the game. Mix that with something like what I linked earlier involving http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIyx23OY8Nk&feature=related
Now all that has to be done is getting a little creative with city interiors (or exteriors if theyre http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16360 prior to modifications) ...Also Levitate

If you think about it this can lead to a lot more spatial interactivity, OK, so you dont have a button that makes you stick to a wall and go up and up like AC; or even the acrobatics of Mirrors Edge, but its still spatial interaction, as opposed to just walking over flat land.

I greatly enjoyed trying to roof hop around balmora, just becuase you dont have a tool that has big shiny instructions on it saying PRESS X TO CLIMB STUFF! doesnt mean you cant get creative. Though the earlier point was made that there is very little in the way of vertical growth in Oblivions cities, which is totally possible to be changed, add some cliff meshes morph some landscape, use those rope arrows; and, my god! look at me, I'm spiderman!

This is the beauty of TES they take the Gamebryo engine dabble in multiple fields to give access to the basics of each type of interaction, then let the community go wild taking it in whatever direction they want.
Streamlining the game (from a design and programming standpoint) to run as well as AC doing only a few things like creating massive cities, most likely culls a lot of the stub mechanics involved with Bethesdas fledgling attempts at various other mechanics, radiant AI, as much as people bashed it is there for people to expand to their hearts content, they just dont, people want it given to them which is a shame because you cant just give and give and give. Anyway the RadiantAI is potentially infinitely better than what they advertised to us. All that is required is a little leg work on our part. This is the difference between simply consuming a game and using it to its full potential.

in all the years I played Oblivion, i never went into over half of the hosues in the IC. so those interiors just went to waste, I didnt need to go in there, and didnt want to. Theres a place for buildings with no interior, and a place for buildings WITH interior, but not all buildings need them. So they could make cities in TES V huge, have some buildings with and sum without. Also it never hurts to have generic interiors for identicle buildings, like the block of flats I live in.

I think they should create big nice cities with a lot of detail and more varity than we currently have they should work on both interior and exterior as they had in morrowind and oblivion.

Why not?

i wish daggerfall was on the oblivion engine then it would be game of the decade but back to the point there needs to be a ****load of more buildings

For the next Elder Scrolls game, I'd like to see one or two Massive Cities. I'm talking like the Closed DC Area in Fallout 3. Something that you walk into and say. "Yep, this is a city". It doesn't need to be contiguous as a single cell, or contiguous with the primary world. But every "City" in the Elder Scrolls from Morrowind, have felt like prettied up villages. With that, it frees up a lot more of the countryside for wilderness and exploration. Of course, occasional villages and farmsteads will be present. But I'd prefer fewer very large settlements, to tons of little villages speckled all over the map. It makes more sense, given that a minotaur could be right outside your front door.

Again, Risen is mentioned. In Risen, and Gothic 1-3, there are no loading screens ingame. So you walk straight down a cave, city, tower, dungeon, whatever location you may find. Just like you could in Morrowinds towns.

Also, when you talk to a person, other npc's wont freeze, but go about their daily buisness.

Basicly, Risen has no "Time Freeze".

Gothic 1-2 have loading screens when you enter a large cave or move to another part of the map. Not sure about gothic 3 and risen.

So, what you're basicly saying is that we ought to make the game for Bethesda? Are they really that cheap? It saddens me that we are required to make the game playable, just because Beth themselves can not.

I'm not saying that any of their games are bad. Beth are quite excellent at making games actually, but that's kinda how I interpreted your post. If we need to make mods, just to make the game playable, is that really good?

Although I must say that Oblivion felt more like a half-finished game. A skeleton of a great RPG. They made the basics, and then DLC and modders had to fill in the actual content.

But back on-topic. Jeez, did I get lost.

I just want the cities to be as big as humanly possible. Preferrably a lot bigger than the small walled villages of Oblivion. The problem is that I'd also prefer the cities to be part of the exterior cell, rather than having their own separate cells. But in that case the cities probably can't be too big, or detailed.
Speaking of details. It is always a lot more important that the developers pay a lot of attention to detail in the cities, rather than making them huge and empty. In Oblivion the cities were quite dull and boring, but with the Better Cities mod they became significantly more interesting. Partly because it added a bunch of houses to the cities, but mostly because of all the other stuff they added.
Ambience, gentlemen.

If we get small cities like in oblivion, then atlest let us get buildings bigger than 2 floors.

well i never had any problems with that, just look at real cities, alot of suburbs are just the same house copied over and over again.

it would be a dream to see a city of Daggerfall's size in a TES game again.

There are no cities without redundant houses. Go look at one.

My issue with Daggerfall cities was not their houses, but their design. Everything was in blocks (or just spread out but perfectly squared up). Medieval (not to say Elderscrolls is, but it kind of follows with the fantasy setting) cities were intentionally designed to be confusing, with the blocks and roads all set at odd and different angles. If TES V is to have Daggerfall sized cities, it ought to follow that design style rather than every city being perfect little squares within squares.

Neither did I, after breaking into a dozen places in the nice neighborhood of the imperial city and getting a potato and some loose change to show for it, my interest waned a great deal. I like the idea of breaking into residences, but there should be a reason to in a lot more places. I broke into a lot more places in morrowind when I found out I could find some awesome gear in random house #5. Maybe the sword of omens should not be found in random dudes house, but a fancy place with guards should have good loot. And the occasional random guy being a retired adventurer with awesome loot hidden in his modest abode is cool as well. Loot being tied to your level kind of killed stealing and burglary for me in Oblivion. Give me a reason to rob places and I'll rob every house in town if I can. And its not like there aren't other ways to make absurd cash, so why not give the thieves a good way to steal cash without having to go online to find the dozen good houses.

I don't know about designed to be confusing, more a case of not designed at all
As for arguments about many houses in suburbs looking exactly the same thats largely the result of modern building where an entire estate will be built by 1 developer or all public housing will use the same plans
With no planning regulations and many houses being self-build a medieval European city was a maze of unstandardised building

Games are not real life.

Odd question, but cities the size of the ones in Daggerfall wouldn't be possible with GameBryo, would it?

Count me as someone who agrees that town sizes in the next TES game should be bigger than what they tried to pass off in Oblivion. Cities in Oblivion were dead, and really contributed to the game world failing in general.

TES5 needs more farms/"non-important" roles for NPCs to fill. Other adventurers traveling around would be a big plus, as well as merchants, and other things that just make sense in a fantasy world.

Modders seem to be able to do these fairly quickly, a game shouldn't rely on modders.

There are other adventurers in Oblivion. However, during the Oblivion Crisis, few people should be travelling. Also, Morrowind's cities aren't much larger than Oblivion's. Thanks to Oblivion's AI(which will likely be improved for TES V), cities are more alive than they have ever been . Morrowind's cities felt dead due to lack of AI and Arena's and Daggerfall's cities felt dead due to the graphics and sounds being horrible(2D NPCs that don't make any noise, except for the guards that repeatedly say "halt" as if they were a bunch of mindless zombies).